Information Communications Technologies (ICTs) have the exciting potential to change the way teachers teach and the way students learn. The ‘Teacher Centric Model’ which sustained teaching and learning throughout most of the twentieth century no longer will meet the diverse needs of our contemporary young people who have grown up with computers. The ICTs will increasingly be a necessary tool to inform teachers and teaching as well a key strategy to engage, extend and inspire students and extend student learning.
Education has taken a step forward to a more student centric learning where students are learning while being involved in authentic tasks that are valued in the real world (Kearsley & Shneiderman 1995). Because of this practical, hands-on approach, learning experiences are more effective if they are highly interesting, engaging and considered to be an authentic experience for the students. By utilising ICTs, students can create, problem solve, investigate, research, plan and present with a greater choice and range of ICTs. In fact the range is so great that it is difficult to write a comprehensive review of all the technologies that I am becoming more familiar with so I will focus on ones that have the potential to enhance student learning and help make my teaching more efficient.
Blogs & Wiki
The early interactive aspects of this course introduced us to the use of Blogs and Wiki. As discussed in my blog (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogging.html) students can utilise blogs for the purpose of their own continual learning. If students are interested in learning more about a particular lesson, the teacher can utilise a blog to assist with continual development outside of school by inserting videos, documents and activities. Teachers can also utilise blogs as a way for students to simply spend time journaling their thoughts and opinions on their learning. This is a learning enhancing tool to improve the writing skills of students as they are not only required to write more frequently and respond to fellow student comments (Ramaswmi 2008) but may be more motivated because of the interactive elements of the product. Kearsley and Shneiderman (1999) discuss their Engagement Theory of ‘Relate’, Create’, ‘Donate’. They state that “students must be engaged in their course work in order for effective learning to occur”. The use of a Wiki in education covers these aspects of their theory. Wiki as described by Bill Ferriter (2009 p. 37) “is designed for collaboration among groups of users”. Students can work collaboratively on a class project such as the one discussed in the following blog (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/03/wiki.html) where students have the ability to create a Wiki based on project topics, giving them a sense of ownership of the site. The site is accessible by millions of people and is open for comment and opinion.
Voki
“learners must perceive that tasks are valuable or interesting or they will not put much effort into them” (Marzano and Pickering 2006, p. 29). What could be more interesting then creating your own Voki? A Voki could be utilised in a lesson as a ‘hook’ by the teacher who introduces the topic and can be a novel springboard to commence and stimulate student discussion. This has been shown in my use of a Voki on my blog
(http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/03/acvokiembed200267fc4e853cf5446f1c59d942.html). It is inevitable that once a Voki is shown by the teacher, students will wish to have involvement in the creation of a Voki themselves as this technology is easy and very user friendly to cater for all levels of age and abilities. Therefore, it will be important to use a Voki not just as an introduction to a lesson but as a core tool to enhance learning.
PowerPoint, Incompetech & SlideShare
PowerPoint is a somewhat older technology. It allows students to create their own presentation from simple to very sophisticated formats that are an effective means for supporting oral presentations. Until now, I never saw its potential as an interactive tool for lessons. An interactive PowerPoint would cater for every Learning Style, visual, auditory & kinaesthetic. However, it is important to note that according to Dale Cone’s Learning Pyramid, the extensive use of verbal and visual symbols is the least effective learning technique (reference Dale Cone’s pyramid). Incompetech is an interesting resource. As stated within my blog (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/04/incompetech.html), students could create their own silent movie (maybe incorporating this into their powerpoint presentation) and utilise sound and visuals as the main focus. Incompetech has a large range of royalty-free music that is simple to download. By having students and teachers upload their powerpoint presentations into SlideShare, they can be easily accessed in one location at any time, making preparation for teaching and marking students’ work much more efficient. Also, students can again ‘donate’ (Kearsley and Shneiderman 1999) their presentations to the world wide web.
Flickr & Picnik
Flicker is a great tool for storing pictures relevant to units of work and would decrease the amount of time teachers often spend locating images when planning lessons. Teachers can find interesting visuals to use as an introduction to a lesson or to generate in-depth discussion and opinion. As referred to in my blog
(http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/04/vietnam-ha-long-bay.html), I have already attempted to utilise pictures as a ‘hook’ for some of my lessons and have tried to assist students to find pictures through Google, often with frustrating and time consuming results. With Flickr one has free access to a numerous and wide range of images all in one location. With Picnik students could take pictures from a source such as Flickr and alter it by cropping, adding effects and changing lighting. The result, an effective picture for use as a visual aid. Please refer to my Picnik blog for an example (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-naughty-red-bird.html) This technology would be a marvellous tool for developing visualising/verbalising activities to assist students’ developing questioning and answering techniques.
YouTube & Wikipedia
YouTube and Wikipedia are commonly used to locate general knowledge in a particular area. Teachers may utilise YouTube to gather interesting clips that can engage students or use Wikipedia as a first port of call for research on a particular topic. These tools are important in improving students Declarative Knowledge. However, as stated in my blog posting (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/04/wikipedia.html), I believe these types of resources do contain risks. For example, YouTube is a publicly shared website where anyone can place clips about anything they wish. Wikipedia at least has tighter guidelines and rules that attempt to ensure the information placed on the site is accurate. As referred to in my blog however (http://jaimeafrench.blogspot.com/2010/04/wikipedia.html), because of the exhaustive nature of the site, I would want to place rules on its usage and ensure students’ skill in research and identifying academic articles is developed.
It is vital that educators must continually update and be willing to embrace new and emerging ICTs in order to maintain a high level of technological literacy. I believe the use of ICTs within the classroom is crucial to the knowledge development of children who have grown up in a technological age where the ability to use technology to its full advantage is necessary not only in the workforce but also socially. Engaging students in authentic experiences through the use of ICTs will mean student skills in collaboration, creativity and problem solving will be continually fostered. This will help maintain and assure a high level of student engagement enhancing, learning outcomes.
Reference list:
The ACU Adams Centre for Teaching Excellence 2000, ‘How does active learning work’, viewed 17th April 2010, http://www.acu.edu/cte/activelearning/whyuseal2.htm
Ferriter, B 2009, ‘Learning with blogs and wikis’, Educational Leadership, vol.66, no. 5, pp. 34-38, (online Ebscohost)
Kearsley, G & Shneiderman, B 1999, ‘Engagement Theory: A Framework for technology-based teaching and learning’, CQUniversity e-Courses (EDED20491)
Marzano, R & Pickering, D 2006, Dimensions of learning teachers manual, Hawker Brownlow Education, Heatherton
Ramaswami, R 2008, ‘The Prose of Blogging (and a Few Cons, Too)’, T.H.E. Journal, vol. 35, no. 11, pp. 21-25, (online Ebscohost)
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